Add Special Effects to Your Movie Maker Film

Ready to take your film creativity up a notch? Click Movie Maker’s Visual Effects tab to display the Effects group. From there, you can add special visual effects throughout your film.

When most people think about special effects in the movies, Star Wars and Harry Potter come to mind: light-sabers, flying brooms, and invisibility cloaks. However, in the world of video editing, an effect is a special visual appearance that you add to the video. For example, Movie Maker allows you to

Flip your movie’s vertical alignment.

Change color footage to black and white.

Rotate your entire movie 360 degrees.

Turn your movie into an animated charcoal drawing.

Maybe these effects aren’t appropriate for your sister’s wedding video, but when the subject of your movie is fun and games or when you want to create a new film noir masterpiece in stark black-and-white, effects are just the ticket. (Horrible pun intended.)

To experiment with effects, simply click the desired item in the Storyboard pane to select it. Or, throw caution utterly to the wind: Right-click any item and then click Select All to apply the effect to your entire movie. Now click any effect thumbnail on the Ribbon and gauge the results.

Again, you can delete an effect on an item (or on your entire film) by selecting whatever needs fixing and clicking the “blank” No Effect button at the left side of the Effects group. How ’bout them apples, Mr. Hitchcock?

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